The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
After grief, Bebel Gilberto recovers her zen with new album
Singer Bebel Gilberto never found the chance to slip a pair of headphones onto the ears of her dad, Brazilian music legend João Gilberto, to play the song she wrote for him. The track is named, appropriately, “O Que Não Foi Dito,” (”What Hasn’t Been Said”).
When Bebel set out to record her new album “Agora” (”Now”), a process that took a whopping three years, she was working to secure power of attorney for her infirm father in Rio de Janeiro, while absorbing what she says were inaccurate press reports about her motives.
She has since suffered a barrage of heartbreaks. First, her best friend had a fatal heart attack as she spoke with him by phone. Then her mother, a famous singer whose stage name was Miúcha, succumbed to lung cancer. The final blow came last year with the death of her 88year-old father, who invented the rhythm that came to be known as bossa nova and made him a national treasure.
“That’s why it (the album) took so long,” she said in a video call from Rio. “It was my escape. Thank God I had that. If I didn’t have that, I would be dead.”
Most of the 11 songs were recorded before her parents passed, but the album is being released at a moment when the whole world is coping with pandemic grief, and Bebel said she hopes it will be a palliative. Songs range from languid and loungey to defiant — set to subdued electronic beats and the tinkling of piano keys. She often swings and riffs, toying with the tempo. The title track offers siren whispers that echo as though beckoning from within a well.
She recorded “Agora,” her first album in six years, for PIAS Recordings in New York with her friend Thomas Bartlett, who has produced acts such as St. Vincent, Norah Jones and Florence + the Machine. The song “Tão Bom” (”So Good”), a dreamscape of strings, is about reconnecting with Bartlett after years apart.